I would like to admire my wife who picked up 5 brand new, no experience at all with them, classes and played them very well. We did the entire fight in about an hour and a half playtime which given the options/powers she had to learn for each character for the first time and the numbers of monsters in the encounter (25) does her credit.
The map is flipped 180 degrees for anyone a bit lost from the last time. Â Same opening sequence as the first play through, party moves up to investigate possible survivor and gets surprised and blasted with scream attack which hits 3 out of 3 this time and knocks them all backwards and prone. Â The poor sorcerer gets pushed away from the rest of the group and spends a considerable amount of the fight locked in the embrace of the Steel Thewed Zombie (STZ) she was blown near who’s trying to drop her in the well but between being blinded and all that doesn’t get to. The sorcerer was dropped to 2 hit points but managed to recover with both a second wind and the use of her Dilettante Inspiring Word daily healing in one round as well as the Shaman moving his Spirit over next to her and providing healing.
The monk’s close burst attack was a good minion clearer and the Warden’s daily Winter’s Grasp did away with 7 or 8 minions by itself. The zone caused some issues with his own group though as they had to detour around it to avoid taking the damage.
The PC’s focused on the minions primarily at first overall then concentrated on the standards before going after the Elite.  The screamer made a couple of ‘mistakes’ using her Despairing Gaze on the warden even though he was already suffering from being Immobile and Weakened and not mixing her abilities up more like using them against the sorcerer while she was in the STZ’s grab power which granted CA. But she was pissed at the Warden and focusing on him.  The focus of the STZ with the sorcerer to drop them in the well also cost them a bit in total damage.
The minions did little damage, I would guess they got into position to hit and actually hit maybe 6-8 times. Out of 20 minions that’s not great. Ranged and AOE attacks destroy the poor minions.
Speaking of Range and AOE attacks. There’s a Hurl Breath feat from Dragon that I had to scale back that the CB picked for the character for me. It allows Dragonborne to use their breath attack as a Burst 2 within 10.  This COMPLETELY negates the Expanded Breath feat which turns the normal Blast 3 into a Blast 5.  A burst 2 IS a blast 5. And has the option of centering it up to 10 squares away rather than adjacent to the character. Why would a player EVER take the expanded breath feat over the toss it 10 squares away? So I changed it to a Burst 1 within 10. That seems like a pretty obvious change to me. And leaves room for the character to take the expanded breath feat in addition and then get a blast 5 usable at range.
As this was another test of my current House Rules, I’m happy to say they’re working well. Fewer misses (on both sides because missing a lot sucks) make for more exciting faster combats, the average damage for everything reduces dice rolling which speeds combat and eliminates the “Crap, I rolled a 1 on my damage dice” although it also removes the “I rolled max damage on my damage dice.” but I think disappointment trumps triumph in terms of emotional weight. And you can still roll a critical and really boost the damage to get that emotional high.
Another thing that came out of this is I want to make another style of Initiative Board with perhaps the init cards held between two sheets of plexiglass and some kind of sliding flag in a slot to indicate the current player.
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